Blogging WikiLeaks News & Views For Monday, Day 30

December 27, 2010

As I’ve done for the previous nearly four weeks and more, I will be updating news & views on all things WikiLeaks all day. All times added at top are ET. For more follow me at Twitter. Read about my latest book here.

10:50 Does Ron Paul regret his strong (and rare) backing for WikiLeaks early on? New interview with National Revliew folks shows he is standing by it, maybe more so. "This can’t be allowed to go without a full debate. If you don’t protect the rights that we have to broadcast and print—as well as for individuals who want to tell the truth about our government—we’re in big trouble" Not so keen on Manning, though.

7:50Good piece by noted author/columnist Richard Reeves (like me, he’s written a book about Nixon) on Wikileaks as the #1 "game changer" of 2010. Yeah, others will pick something else as "top story" but game-changing is what really counts.

5:55 Should be fun: Glenn Greenwald on CNN tonite at about 7 with former Bushie, Fran Townsend.

3:55 Huff Post’s Ryan Grim notes NYT publishing cable on Karzai releasing drug dealers. "President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly released well-connected officials convicted of or charged with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, frustrating efforts to combat corruption and providing additional evidence that the United States’ top ally in the country is himself corrupt."

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2:45 Robert Mackey at NYT blog reports on Assange book deal, and as often true with Times coverage of WikiLeaks the past few weeks, adds nothing to what’s known.

2:30 Glenn Greenwald updates his blast at Wired from this morning: "Evan Hansen, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired.com, says on Twitter that Poulsen is ‘on vacation” but that Wired will post a response to this article tomorrow."

2:15 Still mixed reports on partial BOA outage. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis tweets: "The better retribution on BofA is a leak, not an attack."

2:10 Fox: US apologizes to Peru over leaked cables that report on leader’s affairs, ego, manic-depression and ties to drug lords.

1:35Report from my tweeps: BOA site not loading at all for some, loading all the time for many others, some (like me) in-between. Jeff Jarvis, for one, tweets in response to my query at 1:35: "Dead to me." Then, two minutes later, says it’s "resurrected." This seems to be common experience.

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12:40 BOA site usually loads for me this past hour but occasonally…not.

12:10 Bank of America cyber attack allegedly underway now since noon. Here’s their running timer on how long since began. Twitter feed: @Anony.Ops. Hashtags seem to be #operationBOA and #payback

11:20 Glenn Greenwald hits Wired again in new piece for "journalistic disgrace… For more than six months, Wired‘s Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed—but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year’s most significant political stories: the arrest of US Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks’ source….. This has long ago left the realm of mere journalistic failure and stands as one of the most egregious examples of active truth-hiding by a ‘journalist’ I’ve ever seen.".

10:55 Provocative piece at The New Republic by Noam Scheiber. He says, forget WikiLeaks’ major impact on secrecy, intel gathering, and journalism. More than all that: "It’s about dismantling large organizations—from corporations to government bureaucracies. It may well lead to their extinction." And: "the organizations of the future will look a lot like …Wikileaks. It’s your world, Julian Assange. Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of us are just living in it."

10:50Al Jazeera picks WikiLeaks as newsmaker of the year, for "transforming journalism."

10:30 Much-rumored cyber attack on Bank of America probably set for today, but will it gain enough steam? Latest such efforts have petered out.

9:40 Katha Politt’s piece on the Left "not getting rape" that appeared here at The Nation now up at The Guardian.

9:30 Fromer GOP congressman Bob Barr, at his Atlanta Journal Constitution blog, says WIkiLeaks may spawn a new "Sedition Act." He opposes it. "We can only hope Jefferson’s wisdom and understanding will speak from across the ages to shine the bright light of constitutional truth on such dark plans."

Finally a new Guardianstory on fresh cable: "The trial of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky shows the Kremlin preserves a "cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity", US diplomats say in classified cables released by WikiLeaks today. Attempts by the Russian government to demonstrate the rule of law is being respected during Khodorkovsky’s prosecution are "lipstick on a political pig", says a communique to Washington from the US embassy in Moscow in December 2009."

We report, you decide: Assange claims one of his accusers took "trophy photo" of him naked.

Speculation about if, and when, Bradley Manning will confess and maybe implicate Assange. But Assange denies any contact at all.

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Greg MitchellTwitter Greg Mitchell writes a daily blog for The Nation focusing on media, politics and culture. He is the former editor of Editor & Publisher and author of thirteen books. His latest book, on the 2012 Obama-Romney race, is Tricks, Lies, and Videotape. His other books include Atomic Cover-Up, The Campaign of the Century (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize), two books related to WikiLeaks and a pair of books with Robert Jay Lifton on Hiroshima and the death penalty in America. His Twitter feed is @GregMitch and he can be reached at: epic1934@aol.com. His personal blog is Pressing Issues.